I grew up near the ocean and spent many child hood hours playing at the beach; I loved playing in the waves at the beach and actually do still. The bigger the better I say! I especially liked the night after I spent an unreasonable time in the ocean. Do you remember? You would crawl in bed exhausted and as you lay still your body had those internal motions like you were still in the ocean. I can distinctly remember enjoying that sensation.
I recently read Mastery by George Leonard which is a great read and taught me much about myself and how to persevere through difficulties. One of his primary points is that to become good at anything, to master anything, you will spend the majority of your time on a plateau experience. He explains on the road to mastery you will experience little blips of progress followed by long periods of non-progress. He uses anecdotes from his experience as a martial artist to explain that if you become emotional about trying to advance you will lose ground, or, worse, you may get hurt.
Mastery has been an eye opening book for me in relationship to my desire to follow Jesus. His book is not written for Christians and in reality it is opposed to much of what is called spiritual growth. I grew up believing and teaching that spiritual growth is about peaks and valleys. We have heard the sermon about Peter being on the mountaintop with Jesus at the transfiguration but he had to go down the pastor will say because life cannot be lived on mountaintop experiences. I like many American teenagers of my day accepted that following Jesus was about these extreme valley and mountaintop experiences. I would go from camp, to conference, to retreat experiencing such great highs. Then August, school and real life would come with the inevitable valleys. Having just turned 34 and still relatively young in this disciple thing, I am finally beginning to realize that Jesus’ earliest followers did not live this way. From reading their words there are minimal emotional appeals, and surely the emotional appeals which exist are not combined with high sugar diets, adolescent relationships and campfire songs.
I think in my second half, I will view following Jesus more like a long plateau where I will be constantly learning the same lesson over and over followed by a blip then some progress and a new lesson that will be learned repeatedly until the next blip. I love the emotional charge just as much as the next guy. I mean it can be fun, but it is dangerous to think it produces real lasting fruit. It is much like the waves of our childhood…they are fun and they even last into the night, but in the morning they have departed and we are left with the reality of being on land!
The Apostle Paul speaking said something similar. Philippians 3:13-14 reads, “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” So we press on and enjoy the slow process of becoming like Jesus one blip at a time.
